Sanding...

...and more sanding. Now the guitar is structurally finished I started sanding it. And that takes a lot of time. That is why I did not post for a long time. I spend about 5 hours of sanding already and it will need some more hours to finish up. At the course in Bemmel I worked on sanding away the excess glue underneath the overhang of the top and back. Yesterday I did the whole guitar with increasing grades of sandpaper. Started of with P80, then P150 and I am now at P240. Next up will be P400 and P600. Some pictures of my little workshop at home and the sanding process:

Fretting

To prevent for rattling strings the frets need to be leveled. I first protected the fret board with masking tape.

With a long sanding block I filed the frets down. The frets have to "crowned" afterwards which is basically making them round again. The file which is used to do this job is hollowed out so it makes the frets round again. An example of the file:

After that I trimmed the overhang of the back with a router in the same way I did with the top.
After that I sanded the overhang of the top round. Still a lot of sanding needs to be done before I can oil the guitar. I am in the final stages and cannot wait to hear how it sounds! Some sneak previews:

Sound body

It is now officially a guitar! The last major constructive piece has been added: the back. So the body is closed. Before I glued the back on I measured and marked where the tailpiece should come. The part of the tailpiece which will be fitted onto the body has a large bold which is screwed into the tail block. I drilled a hole of about 5.5 mm wide where it can be screwed in. The thread of the bold is about 6.1 mm so this hole is needed to prevent the tail block from splitting.

Then the back had his turn. I first clamped it onto the body without glue to see if there where no gaps between the sides and the back. Once confirmed I applied the glue and put the clamps all around the body:

While that was drying I concentrated on the nut. With the tailpiece we measured where the high and the low e strings would end up on the nut. With a string spacing ruler I determined where the other strings would end up. I sawed the string slots in. This has to be done in an angle of about 20 degrees

After 1,5 hours the clamps could be removed and showed the result:

Of course the back needs to be trimmed.

Neck

I want to give a quick update on the guitar. The neck is glued to the body. I took a lot of small adjustments to aline the neck with the body so it stood perfectly straight in respect to the center line of the body. But when satisfied the glue was applied to the body and the heel of the neck as well as the part of the underside of the fret board that touches the top. Then the nuts where tightened to pull the neck firmly to the body. A single clamp was used to prevent the neck from pulling up.

Also I drilled the hole which will accommodate the jack for the pick-up which is also the strap button. I used the same method as with the holes for the tuners in the head-stock.

as you can see it is not right in the middle (since that is where the cross is) but just above it. It is better not to place it under the center of the guitar since that will impose a thread of the guitar flipping over when it is hanging to its strap. 

Installing the Tuners

The main job I did on the guitar is installing the tuners into the headstock. But before I come to that first to the position dots. They point out where the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th.15th, 17th, 19th and 21st fret are located. They are embedded into the side of the fret board. I go for wooden dots. First I had to mark the center between the frets:

Then the center is drilled with a 3mm drill.

After that little sticks of wood are glued in:

And sanded back:

Back to the tuners. I need to drill 10mm holes into the headstock but of course first figure where. The back of the tuners is about 2.3cm so I need about 14cm distribution space. I drew out where they should come:

I want to drill the holes with a drill-press but it is hard to aim the drill since it has some natural tollerance which can result in a slightly off place hole. So I drilled the holes to about 3mm with a cordless drill to have a start for drill-press:

 The holes are then drilled through with the drill press:

The tuner near the nut was positioned just on top of where the headstock gets thicker so I needed to embed it into the headstock:

  The end result:

Last thing I did was gluing in a support brace for the bridge:

Headstock shaping

Now the headstock plate is in place I can start to bring it to it's final shape. Not many "action" pictures but the result is pretty nice!:

The bottom part of the headstock still needs to be shaped but we are getting there. And for the total overview:

Head Stock Plate Volume 2

It has been exceptional weather for the time of the year the past few days so I decided to work on the head stock plate in the back garden to soak up the last sunbeams. I placed the graphite rod in its slot in the head stock.

Then the dark rosewood veneer was first up to be glued to the head stock. Then another layer of glue (the bone nut is used as the separator to the fret board:

The plate itself is placed on top of it and the whole sandwich is clamped together:

After the clamps where removed the result looked like this:

With a knife I removed the excess veneer. The head stock plate is still to big and needs to be sanded and filed down to the head stock. But it looks nice already:

Tuners

The Hipshot Classic Tuners came in. Aren't they nice?

Head stock Plate

The head stock will be covered by a plate made out of maple which I'll cut out a scrap piece from the back. In between the plate and the head stock a rosewood veneer will give a nice dark accent:

Next step will cut out the veneer and sandwich it between the head stock and the plate with tidebond.
After I finished the plate as far as it is now I concentrated on touching up the frets which still have an overhang over the fret board. First I used a file which is mounted in a wooden block at an angle of 90 degrees. Once I leveled the frets flush with the fret board I turned around the block. On the other side the block has been give an angle so you are filing of the frets at that angle:

And after that a lot of sanding on the neck. And more sanding ..... and more sanding....
Yesterday I ordered the tuners for the guitar. I choose to go for gold Hipshot Classic Tuners:

Can't wait to see them.

Joining neck and body

The latest job I did on my guitar was joining the neck to the body. It is not glued yet so it can still be removed to fine tune the neck shape. Before I made the join I worked on the top of the guitar. With an eccentric sander I sanded away all the rough ridges that where left by the hand plane when I thinned down the top. After that I removed the excess timber in the overhang of the top with a router. It has a base with a little rubber wheel that you can use to follow the body shape. You have to be sure not to take to much wood away in one go otherwise you are risking to damage the top. So about a millimeter or two in one go. It took three rounds to have a satisfying result:

It is still a work in progress because the last part will be done by hand sanding. With that done, the neck had its turn. To make it not to difficult on my first guitar we will not use a dovetail connection between the body and the neck but a combination of bolts and glue. The glue will be the main structural strength but since the neck can hardly be clambed sufficient to the body two bolts are placed into the heel to go through the heel block. With two nuts the neck will be pulled firmly to the heel block to get a good connection. First I drilled two 9 mm holes in the heel and screwed to sockets in the holes which can receive two stud bolts. The sockets look like this:

Than two holes have to be made in the heel block as well:

The stud bolts are screwed into the sockets and put through the holes in the heel block. On the ends, sticking out of the heel block inside the guitar, two rings and nuts are tightened to make a firm join.

I couldn't stop myself from already display the guitar on the wall in our living room so it is hanging in its rack  above the piano.

Fretting

It has been a long while since my last blog because of holiday and I laid a new floor in the living room, so time for an update. The label I showed previously has been glued in with tide-bond wood glue:

But before I can close the body I have to finish up the rough shape of the neck and align it to the body. It also has to be fitted to the body since I will not be able to reach the bolts when the body is closed because of the unusual place of the sound-hole. To be able to align it I had to remove a small portion of the overhang on the top.

A file is the best tool to do this.
When the neck is not yet attached to the body, it is much easier to hammer in the frets. The fret-board is already slotted but I have to widen the slots to fit the frets in. So I got to work with a small saw:

Once they are wide enough the frets can be hammered in with a PVC hammer. The frets are arranged on length:

And then one after the other they are hammered in:

The over length of the frets is cut off and will be finished with a file later on. I also got the bridge (Schatten Design AT-04 with build in pick-up) so I laid everything together for a preview:

Nice view isn't it (also the new floor :) )?